In Memoriam: Tom Warren

By Avon Murphy | STC Fellow

Dr. Thomas Leo Warren, a longtime force in STC and other technical communication organizations, and one of the founders of modern-day technical communication, passed away.

Tom earned a PhD in English from the University of Kansas. He went on to teach at Central Missouri Residence Center, the University of Missouri at Kansas City, the University of South Dakota at Springfield, and finally Oklahoma State University (OSU), from which he retired in 2009. Under his 32 years of leadership, OSU established the BA, MA, and PhD technical writing programs and became a top-tier university in technical communication. Many STC members might not realize that because of his devotion to international collaboration, he also spent 20 summers lecturing at the University of Paderborn, Westphalia, Germany.

His many teaching and research interests included technical communication pedagogy, international issues, research methods and design, the history of technical communication, science writing, and visual communication. Not surprisingly, his publication output included four books and dozens of articles, not to mention the papers he presented at the STC Technical Communication Summit & Expo and other venues. Many STC members will recall that over the past several years, his book reviews appeared in almost every issue of Technical Communication. Perhaps his crowning achievement in scholarship is his 2006 book Cross-Cultural Communication: Perspectives in Theory and Practice.

Tom took his commitment to professional organizations very seriously. STC conferred upon him the rank of Fellow and the Jay R. Gould Award for Excellence in Teaching. Non-STC awards included Fellow, Association of Teachers of Technical Writing; Distinguished Service Award, Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication; and the Hockley Award, the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (he was the first non-U.K. citizen to be so honored). He was, in addition, President of INTECOM, an international organization of technical communication societies.

Active consulting work informed his research and teaching. He was a contract and coordinating editor for PenWell Publishers and the American Society of Petroleum Geologists. He led workshops for American Airlines Maintenance, Reda Pump, Conoco-Philips Research and Development, the American Society of Agricultural Consultants, the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers, The Principal Financial Group, Southwestern Bell, and the Tulsa District Army Corps of Engineers, and he advised the Research and Testing Department of the Association of American Railroads.

A personal quality that Tom extended to everyone from student to longtime veteran was his willingness to share information. Stories abound of his sharing teaching materials, mentoring neophytes as they attended conferences, introducing people to new contacts, and providing assistance on publications. When I was preparing my last book, he kindly stepped in to write our chapter on the history of the field and helped write the annotated bibliography.

Outside his professional life, Tom enjoyed his family, played several musical instruments, participated actively in his local Masonic lodge, and relished good German beers.

It was always a pleasure to talk with Tom in person and on the telephone. In addition to getting some serious work done, we exchanged humorous observations on the current state of our field, history both ancient and modern, and our personal lives.

Tom’s was a life well lived. I was grateful to be able to call him both colleague and friend.

AVON J. MURPHY (avonmu@comcast.net) is a Technical Editor in western Washington. A retired college professor and government writer, he is an STC Fellow, a contractor, and principal in Murphy Editing and Writing Services, specializing in computer and Web technologies. Avon served as book review editor for Technical Communication for 17 years.